Police report made against unofficial Police@SG app; public urged to remain vigilant

SINGAPORE – A police report has been lodged over the unofficial Police@SG app, which is hosted on a third party, app hosting website.

In a Facebook post on Friday, the police said they are aware of the matter, reminding the public to download the Police@SG app from official sites such as Google Play Store for Android devices and the Apple App Store for iOS ones.

Responding to queries from The Straits Times, the police added that a report was lodged and they are looking into the matter.

The police also urge the public to stay vigilant by not granting permission to persistent pop-ups that request access on a device, among other things.

Earlier this week, the police warned of a new phishing scam variant that has emerged, involving the download of a fake ScamShield app that installs malware in the victims’ mobile devices.

Under this variant, the public would contact scammers through messaging app WhatsApp to buy food items after seeing them advertised on social media platforms such as Facebook on their Android mobile devices.

The victims will be sent a link and told to use it to download an app to make payments.

Unauthorised transactions would then be made from the victims’ bank accounts or credit cards.

After these transactions are made, the scammers would contact the victims and introduce themselves as bank staff, claiming to be following up on the fraudulent deals.

The scammers also inform victims not to download the authentic ScamShield app from the Google Play Store. They also insist that the victims download the fake app from the URL link provided by the scammers.

The ScamShield app helps individuals filter scam messages and calls from numbers used in illegal activities. These numbers will be blocked if ScamShield determines that they have been used for scams.